Bertie would love to run... Letting him do so would be a mistake

There was a thing people used to say about Bertie Ahern in his pomp: that he had an uncanny way of getting through a room in minimal time, while shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with a maximum number of people. Ahern came equipped with some sort of Eulerian radar that allowed him to press flesh as quickly as possible without ever being interrupted in going about his business from one thing to the next.

I wasn’t on the Leinster House beat during his time in office but I did get to witness it at an event last year. It was an Independence Day garden party at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence, and Ahern was there as an invited guest (remember: the Good Friday Agreement is America’s last successful act of nation-building – which is why the First and Deputy First Ministers are often brought to Washington for St Patrick’s Day alongside the Taoiseach). Skilfully he navigated his way from one corner of the open-air shindig to the other, with an aide just behind making sure his journey kept going, taking notes of new encounters and reminding Ahern of previous ones.

It might simply have been old habits refusing to go – a leopard unable to shed his spots – but he gave the impression of someone whose electioneering days were not fully behind him. The irony of the location was not lost: the ambassador’s residence is just across the road from Áras an Úachtaráin.

There’s every chance that Bertie Ahern is merely back in the Fianna Fáil fold now because the party wants to claim its share of the plaudits as Good Friday reaches 25. It would suit both parties not to have the estrangement hanging over them. But there’s also every chance that Ahern can’t kick the habit of seeking adulation from the rest of his fellow citizens, and would love a crack at the top job.

The eleven years that have passed since the final report of the Mahon Tribunal might have diluted the significance of its findings. Perhaps our eyes now glaze over at the thought of unexplained lodgements in foreign currencies; of wavering voices on the Six One News about how friends offered cash to help him through a divorce; of a finance minister not having a bank account. But it’s only a few weeks since we had a national controversy over a Dublin Central finance minister being unable to account for their own incomings and outgoings, and the broader themes don’t change.

The questions won’t just be for Ahern. “Ahern gave a significant amount of evidence to the Tribunal which, in the opinion of the Tribunal, was untrue,” someone said in 2012. “In the manner in which he received this money while holding high office and in the giving of rejected evidence to a sworn tribunal Bertie Ahern betrayed the trust placed in him by this country and this party… I believe the conduct of Bertie Ahern as outlined in the evidence made public through the Tribunal and the findings of the Tribunal constitute conduct unbecoming a member of Fianna Fáil.”

That someone was Micheál Martin. What’s changed in the meantime?